speaker-0: ⁓ you I am of the opinion that liquidation is a great industry. It's a super low barrier to entry and it's a great way to make cash. My opinion is that it's not the best place to sit there for a lot of people to grow a big business because it's very difficult to exit. Right? ⁓ If you had to try to sell your bin store tomorrow, how much are you going to get for it? Right? To me, a bin store is worth whatever inventory is in the building plus whatever fixtures you have that I can reuse. typically doesn't translate to any value. and long story short, it's just, I, I see what happens to a lot of people and they go through like really good growth periods. And with liquidation, you know, when the times are really good, they're great. And we're, you know, taking down massive numbers and then no one pulls that money out and invest it anywhere else. And then when times are shit, like it's slow right now for a lot of people, they're struggling. And it's never like, they just never get ahead. So the goal of my content is to teach people liquidation, to educate them better, how to use it and how to take that money out of it and then put it into preferably passive produce, passive income producing assets. ⁓ So since we have been in liquidation for 15 years, where I want to start is educating people about liquidation. The point of our call today is Mystery Box. But. Tell people watching who you are and what your business is. I wanted to ask who you are, what your business is, how long you've been in liquidation, and then brief synopsis of what got you into the business or what got you into the industry.

speaker-1: Yeah, I'm Brent Yeager. I own a B2B wholesale and I own a bin store and I own a discount grocery store. We've been in the bin store business since late 2018. We started out as auctions and we opened our, we actually opened the store officially in 2000, 2019. So we started, when we started, go ahead.

speaker-0: You got in before COVID and all that stuff.

speaker-1: Yeah, it was kind of tough though to kind of tough to open because we had so many rules in our town, you know, it kind of struck we struggled to open our bin store. That's where we went with auctions first, which actually helped. And people couldn't leave the house, you know, it was it was good. It wasn't good. COVID wasn't good, I should say. But, you know, it helped with help with sales, you know, people didn't have didn't have to leave their house to to buy my product. You know, for sure. So we opened the first bin store in 2019. And then We opened a second bin store and then we opened a third bin store and then we decided let's go down to one bin store and let's open a discount grocery as well. Because as you know, FC product now is full of groceries. ⁓

speaker-0: Is that where you're pulling all of your groceries from primarily is the FC product or you buying any ⁓ case back stuff to blend out with it?

speaker-1: ⁓ Every week I pull in a girl I pull in an FC load for my store along with some other truckloads And we process out all of our food and bring it down to the grocery store every single week But then we also buy frozen or refrigerated from a vendor locally

speaker-0: Oh, awesome. So I love, we're gonna have another, I'm gonna have you on again to talk about the grocery side of things because we know we've, we've, we've attempted the groceries. It's not gone well for us, but I know a lot of people are doing super well with it. Um, so awesome. So mystery boxes. know, cause I've seen your posts on Facebook. I know you were selling mystery boxes ever since you've had the bin store. I'm guessing typically the raw Amazon mystery boxes before any of this curated stuff. And we'll get into that next. How are sales of mystery boxes? What kind of percentage of your sales do you think mystery box is made up specifically, I in your retail locations?

speaker-1: Well, be honest with you long when I started buying mystery boxes, my mystery box sales were, you know, years ago, my mystery box sales were terrible. I couldn't say I couldn't sell a mystery box to save my life. You know, we were buying we were buying manifested, ⁓ manifested mystery boxes. That's what I've always bought. ⁓ What I would do is, you know, the site that I was pulling from was only a couple hours away from me and it actually produced really, really weird. It produced in boxes and loose FC. So what I was able to do is take the loose FC, put it in my bins, make my money on it, and then kind of recoup some costs by selling it by the box for 50 bucks a box. Now, you know, the boxes are a little different, you know, they're, they're full of food completely. Most of the time, most liquidation loads of, you know, mystery boxes are full of food. So it's kind of now we're not cutting and dumping them into our bins like we used to do. That's what I was doing. would cut up. cut them open, just dumping my bins for my five, three, $1 days. It was simple. You know, now it's, now it takes a lot of process.

speaker-0: and the food out of there and send that to the retail stores. can't, the last thing that we've sold mystery boxes too is a customer spends 50 bucks on a box. I can call it raw, I want, they get two boxes of chips and a protein shake. They're not happy. It's not a good experience for the buyer at all.

speaker-1: No, I actually got a load of, haven't bought a, I haven't bought a direct Amazon mystery box load in, I don't know, six, seven months. Something told me, buy one, you know, let's buy one. Let's, let's, I've been doing it, you know, I've been buying the curated boxes, but I'm like, let's try it. So I brought one in and I've never in my life had a, had a customer bring back boxes. had 13 boxes got brought back on my, on my restock day, Saturday. They were just full of food. was unmanifest

speaker-0: Yeah. That's happening. It's happened. There's been a big food dump across the industry, ⁓ with a lot of FCs for some reason we've moved a lot of food for people and they're just getting hammered. So hopefully that's not a long-term thing, but it sounds like overall, when you get these raw box from Amazon, you got the food and then you got the box that probably has six iPads in it. So one, one guy is super thrilled. And then you got a long list of people that.

speaker-1: If the manifest is right. ⁓

speaker-0: This is right. got a lot of things that we got to hope goes right. So you've obviously bought a lot of the raw boxes, curated boxes kind of came to market. They've always been around, but they've really made a big splash in the last like six, seven months. I know you've tried a bunch of them. What was the first curated box you've tried in the beginning? Went from raw to curated. What was the first one?

speaker-1: first one ever tried was a porch pirate box. actually, you know, something told me, try them out, try them out. You know, I had a good relationship with the owner of porch pirates, Austin. He's a great guy. And something said, try them out. But then I kept seeing all this stuff all over Facebook, you know, about, about these boxes. And I'm like, ⁓ what did I get myself into? You know, I brought this load and I called Austin immediately. I said, get this thing the hell out of here. want it because it was already in my head. It was already in my head that these were bad boxes before I even tried to sell them. You know what? He calmed me down and he said, Listen, you're good at marketing. I see all your videos. You know, it's all about how you market this product. You can't just put a box out and expect it to sell. You have to market it. And whether that's with the big ultra prizes or you know, you have to market your business in order for it to succeed. So I said, okay, you know what, let's introduce it to our customers for this Saturday when we open, let's do it. I had a record day when I opened. couldn't believe it. was like, I called Austin later in the afternoon. said, listen, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. said, don't hate me. I said, I was in a bad mood. I said, send me another truck. We sold every single box in one day, you know, and I've been buying them every single week since January. They're good boxes. mean, they definitely are. You know, some boxes are lighter than others, which is just like an Amazon box. You know, some boxes are lighter than others, but you have to know how to pivot and, you know, discount those, whether it's, you know, selling it by weight. You know, we've done that. We sell it by weight sometimes.

speaker-0: ⁓ and the difference with the Porsche Pirates boxes, because we also have a good relationship with Austin over there, is compared to other people's boxes. I know you've bought some others. His is geared more towards being an experience for the consumer versus necessarily needing to have all of the extra value that the resellers want. A lot of people with the raw mystery boxes, our industry, all geared towards people buying these boxes need to make money. And Austin's box is more about a raffle or an experience or the chance to win something big. And I think that, you know, he does a good job of explaining that. And I think that's why the porch pirates boxes are doing really well in retail. But I know with, obviously with porch pirates and all the success they're having, a lot of people are, you know, trying to make their boxes as well. So in all of that, have you tried, have you gotten away from porch pirates at any point in time? tried any of the other creative boxes on the market and if so, how did those compare quality wise to the Forged Pirates boxes?

speaker-1: I've never tried any other curi boxes on all important parts. That customers that bought off me, they bought in porch fireboxes. They bought another curi boxes.

speaker-0: Okay. Good for seeing the target boxes. You haven't pulled any of those into the story yet.

speaker-1: No, I've thought about it, but I, you know, I'm a relationship kind of person. I like Austin and I'm, you know, I'm that type of guy, you know, the thing about his company is if there's an issue, he takes care of it. You know, I stick with what I know. That's, that's, you know, so.

speaker-0: Sure. lot of the, the, Austin's doing, he's building a business around mystery boxes. Whereas a lot of people, cause we've built mystery boxes in the past, right? It's, it's a way to move product. We get a lot of FCN or we would in the past by building a mystery box is another outlet for us to sell our products. think a lot of these companies that are building these curated style boxes, they're liquidation companies that have a mystery box outlet versus, you know, it seems like with porch buyers, he's trying to build a business specifically around. mystery boxes. So I think that's what differentiates him a little bit. ⁓ So just keeping it as a curated box versus a raw box, what do you think your sales have done since you've moved away from the raw box to the curated box? And do you think that brings in more people to your store on a daily or weekly basis than when you just had the raw boxes?

speaker-1: Absolutely. mean, back, back before I started the curated boxes, I mean, I honestly, I was only selling my bin stores very busy. My bins are always busy, you know, I mean, but I would honestly only sell maybe a week 50, 60 boxes. didn't sell a lot of them because the feedback wasn't great. You know, like I said, we use, we used to use our boxes mostly just for cut and dump for five, three, one dollar days. ⁓ now that I've pulled them in with all these, I actually buy extra ultra prizes. I, I add onto my invoice. you know, extra PlayStation fives and Michael Kors purses and things like that and iPads and with bringing those in, we definitely get a lot more traffic. You know, we're selling a half truckload in two days to three days, which is nice. We usually sell about a half truckload.

speaker-0: the

speaker-1: And what happens is, you know, someone comes in, they buy one. it's even if it's not great, if the next guy wins, I call it, you know, they win and somebody sees that they're going to come back in and they're going to buy a couple more boxes because of the chance.

speaker-0: 100%. Do you think because, and again, you know, the point of the video isn't to like, to promote one specific company, but because I know how they work, I'd notice they put tags in the winners. Cause when, when I sold raw mystery boxes in the past, I knew there was iPads in the load. Cause every once in while I'd watch someone open a pallet or a box and I'd catch it. They'd, they'd, they'd win an iPad. But nine times out of 10, wouldn't see that customer like, Oh my God, I won an iPad. They would just come back in like six or seven more times, buy more shit. with the, the traded boxes and Porsche powers in particular, and I think a couple other people have started doing it too. He puts a piece of paper in there that says, Hey, you won. It's clear. This was a, you know, a hit item and tag us on Facebook for a free prize or something. I'm assuming that helps you guys as well, because it. It validates that there are actual prizes in these boxes, not just a, Hey, I promise. There's hits in there, but they're incentivized to promote and verify that there's prizes in there.

speaker-1: Absolutely. It's kind of like what you just said, where, know, a customer came into your place and they, they opened a mystery box that appeared, they got a, an iPad, not, know, you, if you don't see it, you're not going to know. Yeah, that's the thing. But now in order for them to get this, you know, they get the extra Scallywag box, they call it, which is just another little, it's a tiny mystery box. ⁓ in order for them to get it for free, they have to share on Facebook, which then I see it and I'm able to share it on my page. which will get 10, 20, 30,000 views, which brings in people. Oh wow. This guy got a PS five for $60. have to go into that store.

speaker-0: That's it. 100%.

speaker-1: Plus the margins are a lot bigger on, as I know, as loser like us, you know, as like me, the margins are a lot bigger than an Amazon box.

speaker-0: I want to talk about that. I mean, it's been a long time. You know, we've stepped away a lot from the liquidation side of things. We focus more on closeouts ⁓ and other stuff. We've pulled away from like your traditional Amazon Walmart Home Depot trucks. So it's been a long time since I've sold a raw Mystery Box truck load. But what's the current market rate for just a raw box?

speaker-1: Raw Trucker Box

speaker-0: I guess raw truck, but break it down per box price when you're buying a full truck load.

speaker-1: I mean, I sold, I sold this week, I sold a mystery box load at 14,000. 480 boxes. Yup. So you're at, sorry, I'm terrible at math. 2916 a box. You're probably 32, 33.

speaker-0: Yeah. you're box, those boxes, what do you traditionally sell them for in your store?

speaker-1: What's up?

speaker-0: When you sold them, obviously we don't sell them anymore, but when you sold those boxes, how much were you getting?

speaker-1: This past week I had an Amazon mystery box load and I was selling it for 60 bucks.

speaker-0: 60 bucks. All the way around, so I'm sure these people will come back for more. On the flip side, what do you pay for a porch pirates box and what do you sell one for?

speaker-1: So we're going to do I'm selling porch pirate boxes for 65. I'm buying them for 34.

speaker-0: ⁓ so a little bit better on the margins, not a ton, but I'm guessing your customer retention is way higher and they're buying more.

speaker-1: We're buying more boxes so moving more in volume. mean I'm selling 360 boxes in a day, you

speaker-0: Yeah, that's, I'm assuming that's way better than at any point the raw boxes. So.

speaker-1: Yeah, I'm sitting on the boxes, you know?

speaker-0: Don't. For sure. Well, I mean, that's pretty much that's going to wrap us up. You know, don't want to waste or spend too much of your time. The whole goal is to give people real life, you know, comparisons of the robbers, the curated boxes. Again, we're not trying to sit. I'm not sitting here trying to promote Austin and porch pirates, but it's a great example of when they came out to market, they got shat on. I mean, even before your initial video, right? They were. Everybody in the, in in the industry was going, you know, curated boxes are a scam. Don't buy them. You know, you're you're getting picked over product of cherry pick goods. Um, and now fast forward six, seven months later, I think a lot of people are seeing the value that it brings to their clients because there's no, there's always a risk to mystery boxes, but when they, they're curated and they're curated well, it eliminates the risk to your customer. It provides them a positive experience, which brings them back to your store versus. If someone buys a box and they get a ⁓ box full of face masks, they don't associate that with a bad Amazon box. They associate that with what a bargain sucks or war on retail sucks or whoever sold them that box sucks, which what it seems like with the curated boxes, especially if they're putting their own brand on there, like Porsche pirates does, I think blitz box does, and few others. You know, some of those guys have some really good customer service where the customer that bought a poor box from you calls them instead and you know, they handle it. internally.

speaker-1: I've had that happen before where I've had a customer reach out to me and say, Hey, I bought four boxes. Thought it'd be fun. We opened them up. Oh, they're terrible. There's nothing in, especially this one right here. There was one item in it. I said, no problem. Send me a picture. I apologize. Send me a picture of your barcode on the inside of the box. I sent it to Austin and I said, show me pictures of this box. Cause the cool thing about their company is If there's an every inside of every single box has a barcode attached to that inventory. So we can actually see he sends me a picture. I send the customer the picture. said, what's wrong with your box? Looks good to me. That ended the conversation right there. But we did have one one box that was actually really, I mean, it was bad. I'm not gonna lie. It was terrible. You know, it had broken car parts in it. It was LPN. There's nothing we can do. And so Same thing, sent Austin the barcode. Austin sent it back over to her. They worked it out together. Austin sent her a free box in the mail.

speaker-0: Wow, that's great.

speaker-1: I mean, I didn't have it took it took the pressure off me one and it didn't like you just said it wasn't what a bargain sent, you know, sold the crappy box. It was porch pirates, but porch pirates made it right.

speaker-0: Right. And that's a huge thing. so I think a lot of, if these security companies want to stay around, they need to, I mean, I would suggest follow suit because what a great, you know, that's a real business, right? That's what a real business looks like. They're able to stand behind their product, which is, it's a struggle in liquidation because, you know, we're all sitting here, you know, trying to make a living. And a lot of these guys are just dumping, I think building a mystery box is dumping crap in a box. And, you know, it's the mystery of it all. ⁓ but no real curated box company is going to able to stand behind their product. that's, that's great. So, um, yeah, man. So really quick before we wrap up, let people that are watching know where they can find you, where you're located, where we can find you online on Facebook and on Facebook, Instagram, I'm guessing you guys have you on what we find you. Where can we, can people watch and spend some money with Brent Yeager?

speaker-1: Yeah, you can come to my store and shop in, you know, Amsterdam, New York, one Northern Boulevard, Amsterdam water bargain. can find us on Facebook, that facebook.com slash water bargain five one eight. can, so I've said, yeah, you can always search me on Facebook. You know, we have a liquidation deals every single day. We sell a lot of stuff. We even sell curated mystery boxes. Yeah. Yeah. We sell a little bit of those. Every single product out there just about so if you need a truckloader you want to come shop in my store. Come on down.

speaker-0: I'm bye. awesome. Well, man, I really appreciate you're our first guest so far because I've watched you for the last few months on Facebook and it seems like you guys are growing and it's really cool to watch. So.

speaker-1: Yeah, we're 100 % up over last year. I've never seen it in a bin store. never, I talked to a lot of guys and I've never, never seen it in my life. don't know what's going on. I'm sitting back and just watching and I'm like, how is this even possible?

speaker-0: That's all. like. That's great. Especially today. mean, more more bend stores that I talk to are seeing the exact opposite and they're trimming down and it's, it's, it's awesome to see somebody that's actually on the uptick. So.

speaker-1: It comes down to relationships. I'm getting quality product because I have really good guys that I work with. That's helps. Having those relationships to be able to secure quality product every single week for your store, which eliminates competition.

speaker-0: No, product quality definitely matters.

speaker-1: and marketing.

speaker-0: And marketing. Yeah, I'm sure that, yeah, that definitely, that plays a huge part. So, well, very cool, man. I appreciate it. ⁓

speaker-1: Absolutely. Thanks for having me on.

speaker-0: Thank you.

speaker-1: you ⁓